The knowledge trap.

 Certainly there is a body of knowledge that it is important for us to acquire about the self. Truths like each "self" is uniquely designed by its Creator, each of us is always warmly accepted by our loving Acceptor, and none of us can out-sin Grace. These facts are essential to an empowering view of the self. But we all learn sooner or later that insight has its limits. Recovering a healthy view of ourselves will require more than just increasing our knowledge about what is true. In addition to learning the truth about ourselves we will need to learn ways to feel and experience these truths. Consistently feeling and experiencing these powerful truths personally in one's soul requires process, struggle, and time. Knowing is important. But by itself it is not powerful enough to make possible the changes that need to be made.

The inner logic of 12 Step recovery is completely different from the inner logic of our profit-driven, media-based culture or commercial treatment.

The inner logic of 12 step recovery is completely different from the inner logic of our profit-driven, media-based culture or commercial treatment. The fundamental difference is put succinctly by one of my favourite slogans from the 12 Step tradition: "If nothing changes, nothing changes." The Christian community has done nothing of any consequence in the last two generations to decrease the incidence of addiction and abuse. I am unable to point to a single denomination which can claim to have implemented prevention programs capable of significantly reducing the amount of addiction and abuse in its pews. There is absolutely no reason to think that the incidence of sexual abuse in the Christian community is decreasing.

AA's ineffective fantasyland of a program

AA's ineffective fantasyland of a program in which Man creates his own God, rather than "May you find Him now" as Bill and Bob did.

The Alcoholic Addict labours under a belief system which is no longer based on today’s reality

The Alcoholic Addict labours under a belief system which is no longer based on today’s reality and is therefore alien to what the rest of us believe. Most of us hold on to reality as best we can, sometimes with difficulty – so to have one of us stoutly declare that the world is full of unseen problems and fears, that there are voices , visions and blackouts which the rest of us cannot hear or see – this shakes us to our core. In particular it challenges our own personal belief systems – and when we are threatened, we tend to react aggressively, even destructively, which explains (though it does not excuse) the appalling history of maltreatment meted out to victims of addiction .

STEP 4 Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother?

Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution...Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.
 The root of all sin is pride, superbia. I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God. Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride...In the deep mental and physical pain of humiliation before a brother - which means, before God 
Dietrich Bonhoeffer